


Lifeboat

by Ericine



Category: Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Genre: Angst, Bondage, F/M, Smut, Sweet/Hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:12:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5495048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ericine/pseuds/Ericine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He always tells her what he needs. She just has to listen in the right way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lifeboat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dizzy28](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dizzy28/gifts).



> Mostly sprung from a challenge to see how kinky these two could get while remaining in character. I'm not sure how well I did. Fairly graphic depictions of injuries. Takes place closely after Mission of Gold.
> 
> For Dizzy because she plants seeds that then bloom into word counts.

**Thursday**

“I’ll do it, but I just want to know why,” Amanda tells Lee.

They’re having what he calls pity sex and she calls comfort sex, technically a quickie at his apartment before they go home and have a late dinner with Dotty and her kids (he still doesn’t live in her house, and she slips her rings on and off with sharp awareness depending on where she is), but today’s been kind of a hard one (meaning more of the usual—they were tied up, there was a bomb, Amanda cut them out of the ropes with the car keys she’d forgotten to take out of their back pocket, and they were able to get the smuggler before he blew them all to hell). He just wants to be comforted, so he’s gripping onto her hips while she rides him lazily, so lazily that they have time to talk and _feel_.

So that he has time to touch her and reaffirm that she’s still really here. There’s an ugly ( _ugly_ , but the first time they made love after her recovery, it was the first thing he kissed when he’d taken her bra off, kissed until she relaxed into him—she hadn’t known that she’d been standing so rigidly) dented scar in her chest where she was shot several months ago, and sometimes he just clings to her like he’s terrified she’s going to slip away.

Well, she nearly had, hadn’t she?

Not that she doesn’t mind this either, being able to hold onto him, strong and warm and real, while he tells her over and over again that he loves her, that he doesn’t want to lose her, how happy she makes him. She leans forward onto her forearms, right over his head to get a better angle (just slightly—they’re still talking, and he’s just brought up the idea that he _likes_ being tied up, which Amanda finds a little bit concerning because there’s a huge gash on his forearm that he’s going to have to explain and she’s going to be wearing cuffed button-downs for a week (Jamie can't see and won't see because he _hates_ blood) because her wrists are bandaged up, scratched and bruised mess from frantically slicing herself out of the ropes.

Lee tilts his chin up to kiss her, drawn out but with not tongue. “It’s not the tied up part,” he tries to explain. “It’s the fact that you would be doing it.”

She stops moving for a moment, which her body protests silently and he protests _out loud_. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He jerks his hips a little in an attempt to get her to start moving again, and when she doesn’t, he groans. “It’s not hurting me. That’s the point. I know you wouldn’t.” She’s sliding down onto the bed and moves to steady herself. Lee jerks again. “Damn it, Amanda. That feels so good.”

Amanda pushes herself back up, hands back on his thighs behind her, and begins to slide back and forth again. “It’s about trust, then?” She waits for a response, which he gives when he squeezes her hips _hard_. “We _have_ trust. We have so much trust that they might need to redefine the word for other people.”

“You’re never this talkative while we’re— _Amanda_.”

He’s close, which means she needs to speed up, and she’s torn between finishing the conversation and finishing _him_ (and finishing herself—she touches herself just a little bit—he does as little as possible during comfort sex, and they both get off on her touching herself—it’s something that still surprises him, like that wasn’t something almost every woman didn’t know or have to learn how to do). “Well,” she sighs, “you’re not asking me to— _oh_ —do things like this all the time.”

“Don’t have to,” he grunts, and that’s her cue to lean down. She’s fairly close anyway (they’re getting good at this) and wedges her hand between herself and his stomach.

“But I love you and you want it and I might like it too,” she whispers quickly, kisses his forehead, then whimpers as she comes. He grabs her to steady her, and she tries to ride it out on him (he’s still going).

He pulls her hand out from between them. “St’ hurt,” he says, eyes closed. He pulls her toward him, and she lands with her hand around his wrist. “So close.”

She leans forward and, on impulse, takes his other hand around the wrist and binds them both above his head (her wrist protests a little bit, but not enough to make her stop).

He opens his mouth in a long groan and tenses inside of her, comes so hard that he claws at her hands by accident, and she’s waiting for the moment he stops shaking so that she can take her hands off his.

She kisses his face everywhere and says a lot of nothing that’s actually everything ( _I’m here, I’m here, I love you, I’m here, you’re safe, we’re here, we’re safe, I love you_ ).

And then they have to get dressed to make it for dinner.

She’s sliding her shirt back over her head (it’s button-down, but they don’t really bother with buttons anymore), when he grabs her around the waist and pulls her to him.

“That was good, what you did there. Did you know you could do that?”

His hand absentmindedly finds the dent in her chest and traces it. Amanda realizes it and smiles wide so that she doesn’t cry.

He's been _different_ lately, and she doesn't know how to fix what's wrong without making it worse.

“Didn’t know I could do a lot of things before I met you,” she says quietly, and kisses him before he thinks too hard about how much her eyes are shining.

**Monday**

She’s nervous, but it’s an anticipatory kind of nervousness. She’s never minded trying anything new, but they’re sitting on his bed on their next free night, criss-cross applesauce, just staring at each other. Amanda tries to avoid flashbacks to her first kiss.

He’s wearing the suit he wore to work, minus the jacket. She’s wearing the leggings she was wearing underneath her pants (it’s winter, and she gets cold easily) and a giant open sweater, but she’s wearing a tank top under that so it’s kind of sexy.

She wasn’t sure what to wear, honestly. They’ve come from the office, and she unbuttoned the sweater.

He’s waiting for her to tell him what to do, and she has a plan (she’s put way too much thought into this and made sure to throw away her notes afterwards—she’s had to _map this out_ , which is hopefully something she’ll tell Lee someday and something no one else will ever know, except for Francine, who she had to consult in what surprisingly wasn’t their most awkward conversation ever). She just, you know, has to start.

Lee must have noticed the look on her face bordering on panic. “Hey, we don’t have to—”

“Quiet,” says Amanda, softly but evenly. “Clothes off. Keep your shorts on.” He leaves his socks for last, and she tries not to laugh. “Lie back.” She still hasn’t moved.

He stares at her until the last possible moment before he lies down, and she remembers why she’s doing this. He’s left his clothes on the bed, and she pushes them gingerly to the edge of the bed (if this goes according to plan, they won’t end up on the floor) and takes the tie in her hands.

There’s a catch near the base of his headboard—she ties him there (with a special knot that she can’t remember the name of right now, but it’s not the regular kind—it’s one of the kinds that leaves a loop, and she leaves the loop a little looser than normal) because it’s close to the pillows, and that’ll feel good on his arms, which he says have healed (they have, he’s not lying, but it’s not nearly as good as she would have liked them to heal). He lets out a tiny groan then, and she squeezes her thighs together ( _not now_ ), not because of the sound but because of the way he’s looking up at her. There’s trust there, deep trust, the kind that always makes the bottom fall out of her stomach, but there’s something else there that she doesn’t often see. Some kind of desperation.

She wonders if she’s giving him something he wants or something he needs.

She kneels up and takes off her sweater. Then, on a sudden burst of inspiration, she shrugs out of her bra, sliding it out from underneath the tank top and throwing it on the floor (it’s her fancy bra—she’ll wash it here—Mother doesn’t need to know she’s been wearing it).

She works out the kinks in her neck while he watches her clip her hair up. It’s more for practicality, but he’s watching her hungrily, and maybe she flexes a little more than she normally does. No harm there.

She leans over him but doesn’t straddle him, and she tries not to laugh when one of his legs immediately moves toward her. “Don’t move your legs,” she tells him. “Unless you want me to tie them up too?”

He’s still, but he’s a little more than half hard now.

There’s a scar on his side, paper-thin, barely visible to where she can only see it up close, and she leans in close, letting the hair falling out of her clip brush his sides. “How’s that?”

“Amanda.”

“Answer me,” she says. She doesn’t know how to do sultry, but she can do matter-of-factly, and that seems to work just as well.

He closes his eyes. “Good.”

She resists the urge to kiss the scar. She’ll do that later. She leans in and lets her hair brush across his torso. “And that?”

He swallows, and the bulge in his shorts is a little more prominent. “Good.”

She straddles him then but doesn’t let her hair off his chest, letting it drag upward until she’s right above him, a breath away from his mouth. “And this?”

He bites his lip. “Dammit, Amanda.” 

“Language,” she whispers, and leans in but doesn’t quite kiss him in the way that he used to do to her a long time ago. 

“ _Amanda_ ,” he almost whines. 

She’s wearing thin leggings and no underwear (long underwear’s already underwear, and she always messes hers up when she’s with him), and she’s wet and doesn’t mind hiding that. She leans down so he can feel her (but on his stomach, where there’s no release) just a little.

It makes her tank top slide down a little (this one’s old, stretchy from many times through the wash, and her breast is sliding in and out of it on the loose side, which means her scar’s visible again, and she didn’t think about that. He looks at it and stops cold.

“Hey,” she says, a little more sternly than she wants to, borrowing just a little from the voice she uses on her boys when they’ve messed up. “Are you doubting I can do this?" 

He looks legitimately surprised. “No—of course not.” 

“Good,” she says—and here’s the tricky part. She reaches for his wrists (not forearms, because she doesn’t want to hurt him, and she’s conscious of this this time) and leans.

He growls in response and jerks a little, but he stays still (he could throw her if he wanted to).

“Trust me?” Amanda asks him. He nods. And she pushes off his hands and reaches for the loop that she’s left in the tie. Her hands make it in, and she’s able to roll to the side, but she blows his shoulder a little. He makes a noise of pain-but-not-too-much-pain (she knows what all his pain noises sound like), and when she’s still, she can just touch his hands in the tie, where their hands are both tangled now.

He doesn’t know what to ask—or if he’s allowed to ask. “Are you—also—tied—”

Amanda smiles. “Now look what you’ve done,” she says. “Now we both gotta get out.”

He pulls at the tie—he could probably pull himself free if he really wanted to—and Amanda can definitely pull herself free, but the way she’s tied him, he can’t look up to see that. “How—”

She kisses him finally, long, wet, slow. “I like when we do things together.” She kisses him again, and he kisses her back more earnestly, pushing his hips into hers (they’re sideways, so it’s not much, but it’s enough). She tangles their legs together.

“Shame you’re still dressed,” he says—he’s trying to work his hands free.

Amanda thinks “dressed is a little bit of an overstatement. He’s practically hard out of his shorts, and her tank top’s twisted hopelessly to the side. Her leggings are the big kind that never could stay up on her hips, so they’re sliding down too.

She grabs his wrists as close to the base of his hands as she can and leverages her legs up. “Hips up,” she says, and he follows, allows her to work her legs under him. His shorts come off with a little bit of difficulty (she can’t help the fact that his hard-on’s in the way—she tries to be nice), and it takes them a little bit longer, but they work her leggings down a little (but enough, just enough). 

“You planned this?” he asks her, panting, when they’ve undressed each other enough (just barely enough, but no one keeps score for these kinds of things).

It’s a little painful but worth it when she twists her hips so she’s on top of him. “Not all of it.” She really should have taken off her tank top first—she can only hope she looks attractive with it resembling more of a rag than a top now. “But yes—and stop talking.” 

He has to help her with this part—her arms are basically useless, so she can’t push herself up, but he can push himself sideways, and then she’s half on his back, and they’re jerking around against the tie, and she knows what’s going to happen, but it’s still a surprise when he enters her. 

It’s even more of a surprise when he realizes just how much she’s wanted him here, _right here_ the way they are now. She pulls up, hands catching in the tie, so she can pull herself up just a little to look at him. “Okay?” she asks.

He laughs a laugh that’s also half moan. She always asks him too many questions, but this is an important one. “Yes. You?”

He’s eyeing that scar on her again. “Does that hurt?”

It doesn’t make sense, really, because he’s asked her that before, and she’s made him touch her—really, _really_ touch her, to show him that it doesn’t, that it’s okay, that he can forgive himself (because he didn’t do anything wrong).

But maybe he’s not trying to ask her that. Maybe he’s trying to ask her something else.

It’s hard, but she tries the best she can to wrap her legs around him. She wants desperately to move, move on him until they both come (and this is heated enough to where she’s not going to need hands to come—she can tell), but right now, she needs him as close to her as she can so that she can tell him this. “Listen to me,” she whispers breathlessly. “We’re not okay. But I think we will be, and we’ll get there together, okay?” She kisses him. “I made it in California, and I’m going to keep making it now, but we’re never going to move anywhere if you keep stopping and waiting for me. She grasps his tied hands in hers. “We’re going to do this together.”

He’s sweating, from want and from strain and probably a little bit from fear, but he leans his forehead against hers, and she closes her eyes. “I know." 

“You know?” she whispers, and her voice breaks at the end, because it’s getting harder to just lie here with him hard inside of her.

“I don’t _know_ , but I think—” And they start moving at that point, frantically, because they have to, because they can't keep still any longer, straining against the ropes, straining to stay together like this, but she knows what else he was going to say.

They’re back on the same page. Or, almost. They need to get through this first.

She’s never been one to be loud during sex (she finds that it’s her thoughts that are louder, love and desire and everything else so amplified she can barely stand it inside her head, but it never comes out of her mouth), but it’s hard to hold herself bound like this when she keeps sliding down. She whimpers when her arms start to cry out from soreness ( _just a little bit more_ ), and Lee swallows her sounds into his mouth, mostly because he’s _loud_ , louder than he’s ever been with her, and also straining, and also beautiful—

They have to jerk up on the tie to come, so hard that Amanda knows almost immediately that she’s not going to be able to carry anything too heavy for about a week, but they’ll figure that out later. He groans his release into her neck, and she stares up at the ceiling but not quite _seeing_ anything for a little bit, even after they’ve both stopped shuddering.

He’s still breathing deeply, but it’s more even now, punctuated by kisses on her neck, soothing the part where he’s perhaps sucked a little too hard (it won’t be the first time she has to cover that up at work). “Okay, but really, how are we going to get out?”

“Oh, sorry.” Amanda untwists her hands from the loop easily and struggles to her knees (she’s already sore—good grief) to untie him. “I was never tied in, but the knot comes apart easily enough.” She pushes the tie under the pillow when his hands come free, and she crawls over his chest to hug him with all of her limbs, buries her face in his shoulder in the crook of his neck.

He hugs her back, and she realizes that she’s never realized how wonderful his hugs are. She has to work her arms under his back, but she hugs him back. “You just held yourself there the whole time?”

“Well, it’s not like I haven’t spent my fair share of time tied up,” giggles Amanda. She kisses his neck.

He moves his hand to the back of her head and takes the clip out of her hair. She pulls up just a little bit to look at him (and to shake out her hair, which is probably a mess). “How did you know?” he asks quietly.

Amanda smiles. “That’s that’s what you needed?” she asks. She kisses him the same way they kiss good morning, tender and quick. “I didn’t have to know. That’s what you were asking for. You told me. You just—I don’t know. You’re a much more _physical_ person, and I thought that maybe something like this—”

He may have just come, but that doesn’t mean that she’s stopped being turned on, and when he grinds against her, she almost yelps. “Not physical, my ass.”

She sighs, just a little bit aroused (they can take care of that later, though). “You understand, though, don’t you?”

“That we’re both alive, that I can't just stay afraid that you're going to leave me all the time, and that you love me?” (He says _leave_ and not what he's really afraid of, but she thinks maybe death is something they're both always going to have to live with, which she thinks maybe might not be so bad. It comes to everyone at some point.) He laughs a little. “Yeah, I think I got that.” She dips her head back down into his shoulder. She doesn’t get to hold him like this nearly enough. “I also understand that you’re way kinkier than I first thought.”

“ _Lee_.” She can’t see his face (which is good, because she's blushing like she did when she was fifteen and Dotty caught her kissing Hank Tamlen in the backyard), but she knows that he’s giving her _that look_. “I just know some stuff, okay? Us housewives have lived such _boring_ lives, obviously. We had to come up with something to entertain ourselves.”

She's joking, of course, and they’re both laughing then, and Amanda’s laughing more because the more he laughs, the more she bounces up and down on this stomach, and for the first time since she woke up in a hazy hospital room on the other side of the country, she feels that they’re finally moving on again, moving again.

They’re going to get through this.


End file.
